Later that night, Shivas Irons and Murphy play the course again under the semi-light that Scotland’s northern latitude provides . At one point, Shivas takes Murphy to a ravine where the legendary Seamus McDuff used to live. McDuff, the  inventor of golf, was Shivas’ spiritual guide. Murphy’s companion surprises him by retrieving a couple “featheries” and a shillelagh, which he calls a “baffling spoon.” Using the odd club, Shivas  proceeds to hit the ancient balls at a circle painted on a ridge forty feet away. Apparently, the club doesn’t make the golfer; the mind does. Later, the two men return to the course, where Shivas has a hole-in-one, despite the darkened atmosphere. 

In Part Two, Murphy lists archetypes that inhabit the game of golf, as they do all classic stories. I’m impressed with their relevance.

1) Golf as a journey, both physical and metaphysical. Players take off on a trip through the links, and four hours later they return. A “round” of golf is truly round since we, like Odysseus, end up where we began. Starting off, we hope that our journey will take us to the “promised land,” where we’ll shoot a great score or come to some deeper understanding of ourselves.

2) The whiteness of the ball. As we keep our head down and stare at the mysterious orb, does it became a Chrystal ball, a mirror of our inner being? Or maybe we believe it to be a satellite revolving around us, one that we hope to govern. Perhaps the white ball is a sort of egg that we laid in hope of producing some spectacular object in the sky, like a shooting star that will disappear far, far down the fairway.

3) The mysterious hole. Each of the eighteen divisions of a golf course contains obstructions and hazards, but surprisingly each is known by the little  round nothingness at the end: the hole. The ball negotiates the complexities of the designs before disappearing. And then, after each time the ball meets its fate, the player reaches down and resurrects it. Is the player its god? Or is the ball the player himself who recovers eighteen times to continue his relentless search for…what?

4) Replacing the divot. Is this a symbolic effort to repair the friendships we damaged, the painful mistakes we made, the ugly words we spoke, and the violence we inflicted in our lives?

Michael Murphy finishes his mystical masterpiece with a rundown of transcendent goals for the “reconstructed golfer”: The Inner Body, The Luminous Body, Transcendence of Ordinary Gravity (True Gravity), The Infinite Mind, The Higher Self, The Fertile Void, Cosmic Consciousness, and The Inner Eye. Never having studied—or even read—Eastern religions, traditions, and philosophies, I cannot fully understand his brief explanation for each goal. Nevertheless, I concede that some people seem to discern an eternal essence: a connection to a higher force beyond our mundane reliance on logic, the senses, superficiality, problem solving, and experiences. The enlightened follower of Shivas Irons draws insights, mental and emotional strength, and actual success on the golf course.

Michael Murphy provides a perspective of a deeper state of consciousness wherein a golfer acquires  greater understanding of his existence, as well as lower scores. As much as I would like to believe him, I have trouble accepting that the inherent difficulties of playing the game well can be overcome by some “feeling” of energy flows and “true gravity.” For me golf is physical, not metaphysical. I don’t think its befuddlements are overcome by seeing what’s invisible. At least I hope not. The game is difficult enough.